CHAPTER TEN
James Clancy floated through layers of white cloud, his body weightless and free.
The air around him was cool against his face, and below him the earth spread out in a patchwork of greens and browns that looked like a quilt stitched together by patient hands.
He could see everything from up here. The curve of the horizon, the way sunlight caught the surface of distant lakes, the mountains rising like teeth from the land.
This was where he belonged. This was what he had been born to experience.
He spread his arms wider and felt himself rise higher, the clouds parting around him like curtains.
The wind whispered past his ears with a sound that was almost musical, almost like laughter.
His chest expanded with each breath and the air tasted clean and pure in a way that air on the ground never did.
He was flying. Actually flying. Not in an aircraft or strapped to equipment, but truly soaring through the atmosphere with nothing between him and the sky.
It was the most natural thing in the world, as easy as walking or breathing.
He turned his body and angled upward, climbing toward the brilliant blue above the cloud layer.
He pushed higher still, breaking through the top layer of clouds into dazzling sunlight. The sky above was darker here, a deeper shade of blue that hinted at the black of space beyond. Below him, the clouds looked solid enough to walk on, a sea of white that stretched to every horizon.
James laughed and the sound carried away on the wind. He felt like a child again, experiencing wonder for the first time. This was what life should feel like. This was what he deserved to feel every single day.
But then something changed.
He looked down and the clouds suddenly seemed farther away than they had been a moment before. The white surface that had looked so solid began to thin and break apart, revealing the ground beneath. The ground that had been comfortably distant was now rushing up toward him with terrible speed.
James tried to angle his body upward again, tried to catch the wind and rise back into the sky.
But his arms would not respond the way they should.
His body felt heavy now, pulled down by gravity that had not existed seconds before.
The weightless freedom was gone, replaced by the awful sensation of falling.
The earth grew larger below him with each passing second.
He could make out individual trees now, roads cutting through farmland, the roof of a barn.
His stomach lurched as vertigo overwhelmed every other sensation.
The beautiful patchwork landscape had transformed into a weapon hurtling toward him.
He opened his mouth to scream but no sound came out.
His lungs would not work. The air that had tasted so clean and pure moments ago was gone, and he was suffocating as he fell.
His arms flailed uselessly, trying to grab onto something that was not there, trying to slow his descent through sheer desperation.
The ground filled his vision now. He could see individual blades of grass, the texture of dirt and rock. He tried to close his eyes but they would not obey. He was going to hit. He was going to die. The impact was seconds away and there was nothing he could do to stop it.
James woke with a gasp that tore from his throat like a sob. His sheets were soaked with sweat and tangled around his legs. His heart hammered against his ribs so hard it hurt. For several seconds he could not remember where he was or what was real.
His bedroom slowly came into focus around him.
The familiar shapes of furniture in gloom of afternoon light coming through the drawn blinds.
The digital clock on the nightstand showed 3:47 p.m. in glowing red numbers.
He'd been sleeping during the day ever since he'd started this great work several days ago.
It had been easier to adapt to the schedule than he'd thought it would.
He sat up and pushed the damp sheets away from his body. His hands were shaking and his breathing came in short, shallow gasps.
He swung his legs over the side of the bed and waited for his heart to slow down.
The fear was still there, making his skin crawl and his stomach feel like it was filled with ice water.
He needed something to ground himself, something to remind him that the dream was not reality.
He stood on unsteady legs and walked to his desk in the corner of the room.
His laptop sat there exactly where he had left it before going to bed.
Before opening it up, he grabbed his trusty inhaler and pulled deeply from it.
Within a few seconds, everything seemed to clear and grow lighter.
He opened it and the screen illuminated his face with pale blue light. The video file he went to right away was saved in a folder marked "Research Data." He double-clicked it and the footage began to play.
The screen showed a flat expanse of desert at dawn, the sky just beginning to lighten in the east. In the center of the frame stood a figure secured in a harness, surrounded by dozens of white weather balloons pulling gently at their tethers.
The person's head hung forward, unconscious from the sedatives James had administered an hour earlier.
He watched himself move through the frame, checking the harness connections one final time. Then he moved to the anchor point and released the tether.
The balloons lifted the figure smoothly into the air.
James had positioned the camera perfectly to capture the ascent.
The person—Amanda Parker—rose higher and higher, pulled upward by the helium until they were fifty feet up, then a hundred, then two hundred.
The balloons carried her with the same grace James had felt in his dream, the same effortless rise toward the sky.
James leaned closer to the screen, his breathing finally beginning to normalize.
This was real. This was what flight actually looked like.
Not the false weightlessness of his nightmares that always ended in terror, but genuine ascension.
Amanda, secure in the harness, had experienced what James could only dream about.
She had risen thousands of feet into the atmosphere, breathing air that grew thinner with each passing minute, seeing views that James would never witness himself.
He watched her grow smaller on the screen, the balloons carrying them higher until she was just a white cluster against the pale morning sky.
The camera could not follow her beyond a certain point, but James knew what happened next.
He had calculated the trajectories, studied the wind patterns, understood exactly where the balloons would take her.
The footage ended and James immediately clicked to play it again. And then again. He watched five times in a row, each viewing steadying him a little more, pushing the nightmare further away.
This was how he overcame the fear. This was how he touched the sky he was too terrified to experience himself. Through his victims, he could know what it felt like to ascend beyond the reach of gravity, to exist at altitudes where oxygen grew scarce and the earth became abstract.
They were doing what he could never do. And in that way, they were serving a purpose higher than they could have imagined.
James finally closed the laptop and returned to bed. His heartbeat had returned to normal and the cold sweat had dried on his skin. The dream was gone, replaced by the memory of actual flight captured in pixels and stored safely on his hard drive.
He closed his eyes wanting to go back to sleep but knew there was no time. In just a few hours, it was time to claim a third.